Caught up with CTM this morning . Woolly Hug!! Going to miss this so much. DGD sleeps in a cot built by her Great Great Grandad in 1951 just like the one that Peter and Chummy were painting and the same colour !

Glad it was a happy ending for them all last night; Chummy with a new baby boy, Sr Bernadette finally engaged to the doctor, and Jenny in love and riding off on the back of a scooter. Even Fred got a cute new granddaughter (I never realised he had a family.)

I agree with someone up thread though. Jenny has become quite annoying and dull this series. I know that Trixie is the flighty one, Chummy the funny lovable one, Cynthia the sweet and innocent one and Jenny the sensible cautious one. But I think they need to liven her character up a bit and hopefully next series she will become a bit less buttoned up, like she was in series one.

Dragon I said to my DH "That's what us mumnetters call a wooley hug" when they put the blanket over Chummy too . Boy I sobbed like a baby at this episode, much to DH amusement woke up this morning with cramps and have come on 5 days early hence the tears last night I now realise although I do tend to have a little sniff at each episode tbf

Really enjoyed this too ... But wish they ended the whole thing here and didn't spread it into new series. Jennifer Worth's writing is hard and gritty. They tied up several plot lines last night, it would have been a good place to stop, on a high.

They left the future of Nonnatus house quite vague last night. I suppose they could move the location. However, if this series took place in the late 1950s then I assume most of the families living in slum like areas were already beginning to be moved out of inner city areas to newly built suburbs and soon it would become the norm to have your baby in hospital and not at home. So presumably the days of midwives riding around on their bicycles were also coming to an end and most of them would end up working in maternity hospitals. Its difficult to see how they can move forward too much while still staying historically accurate.

Oh how i wept last night I thought it was beautifully done. I was panicking that Fred's grandson was going to get kidnapped from outside the scout hut until she started talking about her swollen ankles, then i realised it was an eclampsia storyline (it is a bit 'casualty' isnt it - you can usually detect the stories from the first scenes!)

I too was puzzled and cross with the crochet/knitting issue

I dont think any of last nights stories were in the books, even Fred's but i could be wrong.

I am also getting fed up of Jenny's prissiness and hope that the producers havent overdone it, and have potentially offended her family IYKWIM

From hazy memory, Nonnatus faced its greatest threat from the pill and relocations .... Suddenly the numbers of babies dropped dramatically. But, from memory, the Sisters vocation took them to where they were needed and I think the moved to working with AIDS patients (though cant remember what they did in the 70s).

Lots of midwives worked from home too. In one of his memoirs, Paul McCartney remembers the phone ringing in the middle of the night and he would get out of bed and look through the window at his mum cycling into the night to a confinement. She died when he and his brother were little.

Bawling! I just about died of grief when they wrapped up Chummy with her baby in the blanket. Then Sheila and Peter had to go and finish me off. I wish they would quite while they're ahead and finish the series right there - it was the perfect ending. I don't want CTM to go the way off the Sex and the City movies and ruin the whole thing

ppeatfruit I don't think she had placenta praevia, it was an abruption. Right before they found the blood I think she referred to the pain "not stopping" or something, which is a classic sign.

I think they are both nasty in different ways - an abruption tends to be an immediate emergency whereas praevia, nowadays, is spotted and planned for. I'm not sure what the outcome of praevia would have been on the fifties.

Inn the 50s a disastrous outcome unless you were in a well equipped hospital I should think. The reason I 'm interested is because DS1 was shown on the scan to be praevia at the beginning of the pregnancy but it moved on its own later on. I was worried for quite a while no one told me I didn't know that placentas move about (well you wouldn't would you?).